"Will you get the candle?" she whispered, trembling. "In one of these rooms we may find something."
I went softly down the bare stairs, and, picking it up, returned with it in my hand. As I came back to her, our eyes met, and a slow blush, gradually deepening, crept over her face, as dawn creeps over a grey sky. Having come, it stayed; her eyes fell, and she turned a little away from me, confused and frightened. We were alone; and for the first time that night, I think, she remembered her loosened hair and the disorder of her dress--that she was a woman and I a man.
It was a strange time to think of such things; when at any instant the door at the foot of the stairs before us might open, and a dozen ruffians stream up, bent on plunder, and worse. But the look and the movement warmed my heart, and set my blood running as it had never run before. I felt my courage return in a flood, and with it twice my strength. I felt capable of holding the staircase against a hundred, a thousand, as long as she stood at the top. Above all, I wondered how I could have borne her in my arms a minute before, how I could have held her head against my breast, and felt her hair touch my lips, and been insensible! Never again should I carry her so with an even pulse. The knowledge of that came to me as I stood beside her at the head of the bare stairs, affecting to listen to the noises below, that she might have time to recover herself.
A moment, and I began to listen seriously; for the uproar in the kitchen through which we must pass to escape, was growing louder; and at the same time that I noticed this, a smell of burning wood, with a whiff of smoke, reached my nostrils, and warned me that the fire was extending to the wing in which we stood. Behind us, as we stood, looking down the stairs, was a door; along the passage to the left by which we had come were other doors. I thrust the candle into Mademoiselle's hands, and begged her to go and look in the rooms.
"There may be a cloak, or something!" I said eagerly. "We must not linger. If you will look, I will----"
No more; for as the last word trembled on my lips the door at the foot of the stairs flew open, and a man blundered through it and began to ascend towards us, two steps at a time. He carried a candle before him, and a large bar in his right hand; and a savage roar of voices came with him through the doorway.
He appeared so suddenly that we had no time to move. I had a side glimpse of Mademoiselle standing spell-bound with horror, the light drooping in her hand. Then I snatched the candle from her and quenched it; and, plucking it from the iron candlestick, stood waiting, with the latter in my hand--waiting, stooping forward, for the man. I had left my sword in the farther wing, and had no other weapon; but the stairs were narrow, the sloping ceiling low, and the candlestick might do. If his comrades did not follow him, it might do.
He came up rapidly, two-thirds of the way, holding the light high in front of him. Only four or five steps divided him from us! Then on a sudden, he stumbled, swore, and fell heavily forwards. The light in his hand went out, and we were in darkness!
Instinctively I gripped Mademoiselle's hand in my left hand to stay the scream that I knew was on her lips; then we stood like two statues, scarcely daring to breathe. The man, so near us, and yet unconscious of our presence, got up swearing; and, after a terrible moment of suspense, during which I think he fumbled for the candle, he began to clatter down the stairs again. They had closed the door at the bottom, and he could not for a moment find the string of the latch. But at last he found it, and opened the door. Then I stepped back, and under cover of the babel that instantly poured up the staircase I drew Mademoiselle into the room behind us, and, closing the door which faced the stairs, stood listening.
I fancied that I could hear her heart beating. I could certainly hear my own. In this room we seemed for the moment safe; but how were we, without a light, to find anything to disguise her? How were we to pass through the kitchen? And in a moment I began to regret that I had left the stairs. We were in perfect darkness here and could see nothing in the room, which had a close, unused smell, as of mice; but even as I noticed this the fumes of burning wood, which had doubtless entered with us, grew stronger and overcame the other smell. The rushing wind-like sound of the fire, as it caught hold of the wing, began to be audible, and the distant crackling of flames. My heart sank.